The Lost Diary of Agnes von Kurowsky
1918. Recuperating in a Milan hospital from shrapnel wounds received on the Italian front, the eighteen-year-old Ernest Hemingway met and fell in love with Agnes von Kurowsky, a nurse seven years his senior. Henry S Villard occupied the room next to Hemingway's. With scholar James Nagel, he combines his own reminiscences with von Kurowsky's diary, her letters to Hemingway, as well as his letters home, to reveal why it was that the affair left such an indelible impression on the young writer. For not only did he model Catherine Barkley in 'A Farewell to Arms' on von Kurowsky, but when he shot himself - forty years and four marriages later - her lover letters were still by his side.
